Ohio Breweries by Rick Armon

Dan Blatt, the brewer at the small, seasonal J.F. Walleye’s Microbrewery on Middle Bass Island in Lake Erie, announced plans last month to start his own brewpub. Details -- including the name and location -- were a little hush-hush at the time. But no longer.

Good River Brewing Co. has launched a website and Blatt said today that the brewpub will be located outside downtown Amherst in Lorain County, a few miles from Oberlin College. Good River also will launch a fundraising effort through Kickstarter next week.

"Things are starting to pop for us," Blatt said.

The Good River name comes from the Native American translation of "Ohio." "We're going with an Ohio theme," Blatt said. "We'll have our beers and a bunch of Ohio beers on draft, and we're going to have out-of-staters, too." The brewpub also will focus on fresh and local produce.

Before you get too excited about sampling Good River beers anytime soon, the opening is still a ways off -- as in March 2014. The original plan was to shoot for March 2013.

"We have one shot of doing this correctly so we want to make sure we have all our i's dotted and t's crossed," Blatt said.

Even though the opening is well off in the future, Blatt already has a list of planned beers on the website. He also plans to blog about the opening process -- similar to how Scott LaFollette blogged about the ups and downs on opening Blank Slate Brewing Co. in Cincinnati. Next week, the website also will have a link to the Kickstarter campaign.

Meanwhile, Blatt will be at the International Beer Fest at the I-X Center in Cleveland (May 11-12) showcasing a J.F. Walleye's IPA.